Sweeney’s balancing act will be true test of his powers

THE measure of a good CEO is not the size or wealth of the organisation he runs, but the quantity and complexity of the issues he has to deal with.

Bill Sweeney faces a huge challenge in trying to rebalance his organisation’s outgoings, while hamstrung by the decision of predecessors to hand the Premiership control over a significant chunk of these for an eight- year period, of which half is still to run.

PRL equates to a recalcitrant major shareholder, acting in its own narrow self-interest, severely constraining the RFU’s ability to respond to all of the competing needs for support from around the game. I for one don’t envy him the task.

If you need evidence of the difficulties posed by conflicting demands from different parts of his ‘business’, you only have to consider the huge fuss made, when he and his colleagues took a clear decision to cut Championship funding.

Yet he was proposing to cut by less than half the £6m a year that had been poured into artificially sustaining an uncommercial league, that clearly was still unable to produce teams remotely capable of competing at Premiership level – partly because most of the beneficiary clubs were interested only in maintaining their subsidised and privileged position at Level 2. A waste of money, if ever there was one!

Never was able management more needed and, while some permanent, voluntary salary sacrifice from the top, as recently suggested by Nick Cain, might have a positive part to play in some future game-wide review of incomes, such a step would be little more than an empty and probably wasted gesture at this juncture.

Pigs might well fly, before the PRL comes voluntarily to look beyond its immediate short-term financial interests to consider what value primacy in a failing sport would have, if the community game continues to be starved of support.

The millions the top tier is draining out of central coffers every year are much more fundamental to the game’s welfare than are a few hundred thousands of executive pay. Whenever, therefore, negotiations between the RFU and PRL are opened, it will be vital that the governing body is led by a strong and experienced CEO. JOHN ALLANSON Bishop’s Stortford RFC